


your day number one in the rest of forever

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 'Til the End of the Line (and Then Some), Breakfast in Bed, Bucky Barnes' 99th Birthday, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Schmoop, So Much Undying Love and Such, Steve Wants To Treat His Fella For His Almost-Centennial, This Is The House That Feelings Built, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 19:29:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6207571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Double digits,” Steve says idly, his smile so present in the words as he pulls back, but only just enough to run the tip of his nose along Bucky’s cheek. “We got excited enough to get into ‘em.” </p><p>“Might as well celebrate the last of ‘em with,” and Bucky’s grin is sly as he nips at the hinge of Steve’s jaw: “equal enthusiasm.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	your day number one in the rest of forever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weepingnaiad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad/gifts).



> A birthday ficlet for my dearest [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad) all about Bucky's birthday, including (hopefully) lots of the particular things she enjoys like schmoop and fluff and feelings and a magnetized hematite-banded ring, etc. etc. <3 
> 
> Title credit to the inimitably brilliant [Vienna Teng](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U4n_8R5lKnw).

There’s weight on his chest, glorious and secure and he could chart the profile, the silhouette of that body, that head atop his heart making the beat feel solid: he could fill in the outline in all the colors and soft shades that is the man he loves by rote, with reckless, wondrous abandon on command, in every stolen-gifted moment they have, in the impossible now.

He could do it. He would do it.

But in this moment, as he rises up from sleep: in this moment, he simply breathes, and relishes the feeling of that body lifting with him, unafraid as his lungs toss that trusting frame and ease it down again.

Bucky doesn’t think he’ll ever wholly get used to it; the way Steve loves him. The way that Steve _stays_.

He thinks, probably, that he’s not supposed to. Not because he doubts—he has stopped doubting, and that’s a miracle of its own—but instead because Bucky doesn’t ever want to take what he has, what he’s found and held to and been held in return to make: he doesn’t ever want to take that for granted. To forget how incredible it is just to be able to have a heart that beats, not to mention the one thing it had ever beat _for_.

“Morning,” Steve breaths, dropping a soft kiss to the blush of skin around Bucky’s bare left nipple; Bucky knows Steve can hear the shift in his pulse, knows he’s awake now without looking, without Bucky moving, or speaking, because Bucky would know it in Steve just as close and clear. 

Bucky dips his chin and buries his face in the mess of Steve’s hair, just breathes him in, because he can, and he can feel Steve’s smile against his naked skin, soft curl of joy that comes as Bucky inhales, exhales, over and again for a few long, gentle moments and Bucky knows Steve can hear that, too, because there’s a particular treble to a heartbeat when the blood it pumps knows joy.

Steve brushes lips against that heartbeat, swift and sweet, before he looks up, eyes bright when they meet Bucky’s, chin balanced on the line of Bucky’s sternum, taking in what he sees with a kind of breathlessness that Bucky’s never deserved, but relishes nonetheless.

Steve scoots up, shifts his lips so that his knees straddle Bucky’s thighs; lifts himself so as to capture Bucky’s lips full on, honey and wine: pure indulgence, pressed so sweet as Steve speaks into his open, wanting mouth:

“Happy Birthday.”

“Mmm,” Bucky tilts his chin to hum it into Steve’s waiting kiss, pulling him close, chest to chest as he devours, and offers himself in kind: Steve gives and takes in the dance Bucky never forgot, partnered perfectly in a way, in a step that makes his dizzy, makes him ache with how _good_ it is, always.

“Double digits,” Steve says idly, his smile so present in the words as he pulls back only enough to run the tip of his nose along Bucky’s cheek. “We got excited enough to get into ‘em.” 

“Might as well celebrate the last of ‘em with,” and Bucky’s grin is sly as he nips at the hinge of Steve’s jaw: “equal enthusiasm.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Steve stretches to bare his neck to Bucky’s intentions, deferent to Bucky’s “we’ll have plenty of that.”

Bucky quirks a brow. “You got something planned, Rogers?”

Steve gets that smirky-smile on him, horrible tease that he is: the way he learned to hide how bad he is at lying. 

“Maybe.”

Bucky stretches long and slow underneath Steve’s weight, and watches Steve shiver for the way the tiny little movements shift him in kind. Bucky thinks Steve on top of him is the best birthday present he could ask for, best kind of day he could spend. Maybe he says as much out loud.

Maybe Steve flushes to the tips of his ears, real pretty, like he always does, and yep.

Best way to spend any day, best present he could get.

“I,” Steve shakes his head, to clear it rather than to say no to a thing; Bucky watches with undying fascination as Steve’s blown pupils—so easy to do it, too; so damn _easy_ —shrink enough to see the blue again as Steve focuses on the moment, on what he wants to say. 

“You made my birthdays so perfect when we were kids,” Steve says, gaze serious, so full of all the roiling things that live in that shimmering-transparent, over-feeling soul. “And then, once Ma was gone...”

Steve’s eyes slide down to the sheets, unseeing for a moment, until Bucky’s cups his chin, splays fingers along his cheek and waits until he’s ready to turn into the touch.

It doesn’t take long.

“And I was never in the position to give you the same, then.”

“Stevie,” Bucky leans in, speaks low. “You gave me everything that mattered. Everything I wanted.” He kisses the corner of Steve’s mouth, quick but firm, a punctuation to his point as he breathe there against that crease in the skin: “More than.”

“Still,” Steve turns, presses his own kiss to the center of the palm still at his cheek. “This is the first year we’ve ever had that I can actually give you what you used to give me.”

Bucky’s eyes narrow, and he reads the protest that must show in his own eyes in the sadness that suffuses Steve’s between one breath and another; in the moment it takes for Bucky to bring both hands to Steve’s face and frame it, hold him still and warm and dear in every way.

“You don’t _owe_ me, babydoll,” Bucky speaks low, but full of feeling, because how could Steve ever think, how could any balance in the universe place Steve in _Bucky’s_ debt, how—

“No,” Steve says, soft and simple. “No, it’s not that. I just,” he turns into Bucky’s touch, closer: kisses the crease of his palm, traces his tongue over just enough of the life line to send a shiver down Bucky’s spine. 

“I want to make you feel the way you made me feel. Hell, the way you still make me feel, every day I wake up next to you,” and Steve reaches up, then, covers Bucky’s hands on his face with his own hands, so fucking warm. 

“But I wanted to give you that, special. On your _birthday_.”

And those big blue eyes are so bright, so genuine, so full of want and need that exceeds the physical, that touches something deep in Bucky’s chest so that there’s really only one thing he can say.

“Alright.”

Steve smiles, and leans down to kiss him, full on the lips, unhurried and unfettered.

They only break apart at the soft sound of whirring, and the waft of something only slightly less delicious than the scent at Steve’s hairline, just behind the ear: all sweat and soap and _him_.

Bucky glances over, sees FELu— _For Elderly Luddites_ , the multifunctional robot housewarming gift from that asshole Stark, because of course Tony’d heard them call each other that somehow, even though they were fucking careful not to give that dickhhead ammo—presenting a tray with, oh, _yeah_. Happy Birthday to _him_.

“Eggs benedict?” Bucky asks happily, because he loves eggs benedict a whole fuckton of a lot, and he can’t poach an egg to save his life.

Neither can Steve, so it was obviously FELu’s handiwork, but Bucky couldn’t care less. His mouth’s literally watering.

“Not just,” Steve winks, and grabs the plate to present to Bucky, who sits up eagerly like a kid on Christmas.

“Holy fuck,” Bucky says when he sees the spinach and the salmon on the muffin beneath the hollandaise, because whenever they go out for breakfast Bucky bitches that he can’t have Royale Benedict Flornetines because what he _really_ wants is spinanch _and_ ham _and_ fish, goddamnit. And yeah, as Steve points out regularly, he could just ask for it and see if they’d do it and pay extra, but no, it’s the _principle_.

And the principle is laid before him, gorgeous and glorious and smothered in yolk sauce of the highest order.

He doesn’t hesitate to dig in.

“You’re a breakfast god,” he moans through a mouthful, and Steve just laughs, reaches out to wipe a bit of egg from Bucky’s mouth. 

Bucky reaches for a sip of coffee—not from his own mug on the platter, of course, because that’s not where Bucky drinks coffee from until Steve’s is gone, even if Steve’s is far too sweet for him. He just likes knowing that what’s Steve’s is also his. He likes tasting just the hint of his lover on the lip of the cup.

So it’s weird, when he grabs for the mug Steve has in his hands, that it’s just a touch sweet, beyond the taste of Steve. Bitter underneath.

“You made it how I like it,” Bucky asked, brow furrowing.

“Of course I did,” Steve says, with more tenderness than the moment calls for, but Bucky soaks it up like the sun. 

“But this is yours.”

“And I know you prefer to steal mine before you grudgingly accept that you’re stuck with your own,” Steve answers, like it’s obvious. “Even though you don’t like it so sweet.”

He doesn’t. He mostly just likes his sweetness to come from Steve.

So he kisses him, long and deep, setting the mug to the side as he sucks at Steve’s lower lip, as he tongues across Steve’s teeth, one by one.

Maybe he watches the hectic rise and fall of Steve’s chest when they break apart, both of them breathless, but whatever. It’s his birthday.

“And, of course,” Steve says, voice a little thin still as he gasps back his breath while he leans toward FELu, straightening back up with two packages in hand. “Presents.”

And Bucky doesn’t need presents, not when he’s got Steve, but more than the fact of the gifts themselves is the way that they’re wrapped: brown paper, newsprint. Fishing twine.

“Steve,” Bucky says, a little choked up, because that’s what they had, that’s how presenst always used to be, and—

“Eat first, though,” Steve says, setting the presents on the bed and nudging Bucky’s food toward him. “It’ll go cold.”

Bucky swallows the ball of emotion in his throat and does as Steve instructs him because, well. It’s not _hard_.

“I get the impression that you’ve got an agenda,” Bucky says between bites, brow quirked as he smirks a little, a question and a suspicion all in one.

“Maybe, yeah,” Steve concedes; “if you want an agenda. But it’s an agenda that can be easily abandoned,” Steve’s quick to qualify, “if you’re feeling more like a day in, or no plans at all.”

“So basically,” Bucky summarizes as he stretches out from the waist, leaning heavier into the headboard of the bed. “We can go somewhere, or stay in and cuddle on the couch while we watch _The Lego Movie_.”

Steve grins wide, and fuck, Bucky’d end the world, just for that smile.

“Exactly.”

“Perfect.”

And the way Steve looks at him as he smiles back: the way Steve looks at him almost seems like he’d end the world for Bucky’s, in kind. Impossible.

 _Everything_.

“Come on,” Bucky stabs some of his breakfast onto his fork and offers it in Steve’s direction; “share.”

Steve looks at it dubiously. “Get rid of the fish.”

Bucky scoffs, shaking his head. “You’re missing out,” he laments, but does as Steve asks, popping the salmon into his own mouth before Steve wraps those full pink lips around the bite with more sensuality then is technically necessary, but it’s not like Bucky’s complaining, so that’s how they finish breakfast, and maybe Bucky kisses Steve between forkfulls so his lips are cherry red by the time they’re done: and if so, all the better.

“Presents now.” 

Steve’s eyes are bright, excited like it’s _his_ goddamn birthday, and the mattress bounces as Steve crawls around Bucky from behind and curls around him, knees at Bucky’s hips so he can watch from Bucky’s own perspective as he unwraps his gifts. And that’s always been Steve, that’s always been Steve up and down, pressed against Bucky’s back and watching over his shoulder as he ripped through paper for a candy bar, a second-hand cap that looked near enough to new, a drawing from Steve’s hand with Steve’s heart visible in every stroke: Steve was fine with seeing you just from the side, so long as he could _feel_ what the present made you feel, near as he was able.

So Bucky rips open the news print first, and catches the happy hum of Steve’s pulse against his spine as the man leans closer, watches as the paper falls away and the clang of metal on metal on metal again rings out and then—

“Steve,” Bucky barely breathes, eyes wide as he stares, disbelieving. “Steve, you...”

He lets the pad of his finger catch in the notch, one after the other, lets it pull at his skin to make it real, so real, and he hadn’t realized how he missed their weight: 

“You always used to give me the most thoughtful gifts,” Steve murmurs into the strip of skin still there at Bucky’s left shoulder, his hand warm and firm and like a palm against the metal that leads down. “Whatever you could find, with money you shouldn’t have spent, and worked too damn hard to get when you should have been resting, or treating yourself for once, or taking care of your family—”

Bucky’s right hand darts to clasp the one Steve’s got on his left elbow, links their fingers and pulls their hands to the hard line of Bucky’s clavicle, just left of the sternum; presses close enough to hurt as he exhales, sharp:

“You have _always_ been my family.”

“No, I,” Steve kisses the base of Bucky’s neck and whispers there, at the killshot, at tenderest, most vulnerable point: “I know.” 

He speaks it to the base of Bucky’s neck, and that means somethng sacred, to say it just there. 

“But the point is, you saved that money for me, and made me feel like the king of the whole world, just for mattering that much to someone as good and beautful and brilliant as you,” Steve drags his lips to the crook of Bucky’s neck to look at the dog tags hangs, tangled in Bucky’s fingers: precious.

“And honestly, these didn’t cost me more than the shipping, and a little forceful language toward the curator, but,” Steve buries himself in Bucky’s skin before he continues, muffled against the tension Bucky feels in his frame. 

“They found them, in the Alps, years ago.” And yes, Bucky things: they’re worn enough and bent to prove their authenticity, to have slipped from his neck as he hit the bottom. 

“I’m hoping you might still wanna wear them.”

And it’s pure luck, or fate, or whatever really, that no one seems to have figured it out yet, or else, never mentioned it—that curator probably knew—but whenever anyone had reason to look at those tags, they always picked the wearer’s first: no harm, no foul. But the moment Bucky could breathe clear after Azzano, Bucky’d grabbed Steve buy the chain at his neck and pulled him in, held him close to make sure he was real, and then slipped the tags off him to split their pairs, 50-50: they’d live at one another’s chest, and die just the same.

Steve hadn’t let go of him once that night. Steve breathed him in across those hours like he was so much better than air.

“You know I do,” Bucky breathes in, a little shaky; wholly overwhelmed. “Put ‘em on for me?”

Steve doesn’t hesitate: grabs the tags and drapes them carefully of Bucky’s head, mindful of his hair, until they fall just over the flutter of his pulse, and Steve flattens them, cool under he touches them warm, and kisses the side of Bucky’s face as he murmurs, deep and full:

“Perfect.”

And Bucky closes his eyes for a moment, and just lets that familiar weight sink back into his skin, through to his bones: him and Steve. Him and Steve. 

To the end of the line, and then some.

“You got one more.”

Steve’s handing him the brown paper, and Bucky has no idea what could come after what he already has, what could make it any better or any _more_ , but he can feel Steve nearly vibrating against him, and so he knows whatever it is, it’s important.

Steve almost seems nervous. Bucky’s not sure what that means.

But if Steve’s nervous, that means Bucky reaches out, steadies him. So that’s exactly what he does.

The sigh steve lets out at the touch of Bucky’s hand on his thigh is full of so much, Bucky doens’t even recognize all of it. All he knows is that it leaves Steve with his breath, and Steve calms, settles, sinks against Bucky will the fullness of his weight, and that’s as it should be.

All is right with the world.

Bucky slides a fingertip beneath the tape and begins unwrapping the oddly shaped, uneven lump of a package, only to find more paper. And more paper. And crumpled balls of paper. A maze of misdirection in form, apparently, is the game Steve is jonseing to play. Bucky’ll go along.

And then he gets to the center: a box. Not the velvet shit they do today, but the old kind: sharp corners, leather side, snap latch.

Suddently, there’s no air in the room.

“ _Steve_.”

“I gave you this to pawn,” Steve breathes against the curve of Bucky’s neck, reaching around to flip the box open in Bucky’s hold, and Bucky can feel the thunder of his pulse at the side of his throat, raucous from the inside against the gentle brush of Steve’s hair from without. 

“For my medication in ‘39. And you came home with the treatment, ‘cause you always did,” Steve presses a careful line of kisses down to the juncture where metal creeps into skin, and keeps going.

Because _he_ always _does_.

“How’d you pay for it?” Steve murmurs into the steel, and feeling is different there, but there’s still feeling, and Bucky still shivers for it.

“I...”

“You said, the next week, that your granddad’s watch got crushed on the docks,” Steve speaks into the metal arm, holds Bucky close by that arm and speaks with a voice lower than the average human could likely parse.

“I asked you why the hell you had it with you there in the first place, and you said you forgot it in your pocket.”

Bucky swallows, and yeah.

Yeah, he remembers.

“You sold that instead, didn’t you.”

It’s not a question, so Bucky doesn’t give it answer. But his heart’s still pounding, because there’s still a ring in the box in his hand. And it’s Steve that’s given it to him. 

“I wasn’t going to let you get rid of this,” Bucky rasps, blinking quick in the face of the simple but _significant_ band of silver, that line of black through the middle all around that sometimes grabbed at coins and held. “What else did you have of your dad, Steve?”

“It was with the things you left in the apartment,” Steve whispers, and Bucky can feel heat even when Steve lifts his head and lays it next to Bucky’s; he knows Steve’s shed tears before he presses a cheek to Bucky’s own, the dampness evident. 

“They were all in storage, once I went to Lehigh, and they got donated once I went into the ice,” he says it without feeling, but Bucky can trace the way tears fall between their skin ever-quicker, and Bucky’s free hand grabs for Steve’s own on instinct, braces for the way Steve clutches back like he’s seeking a lifeline, like he’s always been seeking a lifeline, ever since he downed that plane, and Bucky’s it.

Somehow, in this universe Bucky barely understands: for Steve, Bucky is _it_.

“Howard got hands on a good chunk of it, which then went to Tony, who had no interest,” Steve laughs, but it’s crossed hard with a sob as he chokes: “It was still wrapped in your sock.”

And Steve’s cheek drags across Bucky’s, tacky with salt and rough with morning stubble as he refuses to lose contact, refuses to breathe anywhere but at Bucky’s side as he reaches, wraps his own hand against the one of Bucky’s that holds the box, and only trembles a little.

“I want to give it to you again, Buck,” Steve says, soft and light but saturated with intent at the shell of Bucky’s ear. 

“But this time, I want you to keep it. I want you to,” and Steve falters, a little; buries his face tighter against Bucky’s jaw.

“I want you to wear it,” he speaks to the corner of Bucky’s slightly agape mouth as the reality settles in; the fact that this is happening, and happening to _him_. 

“I want you to wear it and feel everything that it means,” Steve exhales, and then in one straight shot, one breathless go: “To think on everything it stands for every time you see it. I want to give it to you, and you’ve already got me, all of me, everything but I want to give you this one more time, and I want to give you forever along with it.”

And Steve moves, and Bucky looks up, and Steve’s on both knees on the bed in front of him, eyes bleed every feelings that’s ever passed between them as he cups Bucky’s hands, safe and soft in his own around his offering, their history, their future where it stands: a gift.

Good _god_.

“Can I, Buck?” Steve asks, solemn and hopeful, somehow all at once. “Will you?”

And Bucky doesn’t have a voice, just then; Bucky feels to light to hold onto this world, somehow, and he doesn’t know what he says or does, save that Steve smiles softly at him, and slips the ring on his finger: magnetic to the circumference of his left fourth finger, the pull he’s always felt to Steve like the universe telling them _yes, it was always going to be like this, you were always going to make it here_, somehow, and oh, but it feels so _right_.

And because he has no voice, no words, but his heart is pounding loud enough to speak for him, strong enough and full of joy that he knows it’ll say what he needs: he guides Steve upward, slides him even to breathe where he breathes face to face with those skyline eyes deeper than Bucky’s ever seen them, pupils huge and gaping and open for them to make something new, something perfect, and yes.

And if Steve can read Bucky like he can read Steve; if Steve knows the feel and the sound of devastation as clear as he does ecstasy in the racing of Bucky’s blood, then Bucky hopes like hell that this new thing, this never-known, never-thought, only-dreamt thing that exists in him just now and exceeds itself over and again with every unparalleled, unequaled, exaltant beat, all heaven and devotion and disbelief for this level of bliss—he hopes like hell that it’s an answer, because Bucky’s heart is knocking so heavy, so full against his ribs and his chest is heaving with the kind of elation that Bucky wasn’t sure existed, yet here it is, Steve’s offering it and Bucky’s overflowing with it, and there are no words: Bucky’s heart is knocking, and Steve’s is open already, letting him in. And there is nothing Bucky can do save hold Steve close against his chest and kiss his mouth like the world’s ending in beginning, and hope like _hell_ that Steve understands what drives and lives inside the pounding of his heart.

Pure, unadulterated feeling. Absolute joy. Unmitigated _love_.

And yet, still, somehow: _more_.

They part, and it’s almost like Bucky’s never seen Steve before, he captivates every inch of him, every cell: and Steve’s staring at him with that same kind of wonder, and Bucky laughs wetly as he pulls Steve close, lets Steve fall into the space made for him just under Bucky’s chin, sprawled just over Bucky’s heart.

So Bucky gasps, he holds: he keeps trembling as he chokes on a sob and lets the happiest of tears land on Steve’s head—there’s is one more thing Bucky can do.

Bucky takes Steve’s hand in his own, lets Steve’s fingers twine in his to feel the weight, the shape and countour of the ring against the plates of his knuckles, and where Steve’s hand had already found itself flat against Bucky’s chest, Bucky brings their joined grasp back to that same place, and the hitch in Steve’s breathing is all he needs to know that it’s right. That this, them, here, now, forever.

 _Yes_.

And they stay there, entangled, breathing, one ring and two hands and more heartbreats than they can count, and maybe there were plans for the day. Maybe there were things to do.

They’re irrelevant.

Because suddenly—ninety-nine years young—Bucky Barnes has all the world in front of him.

It’s already the best birthday he could ask for.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).


End file.
